The Inti-Illimani folk ensemble crammed four decades of musical pilgrimage in an intense 90-minute performance Wednesday night at the Williams Center for the Arts in Easton.

The eight members of the iconic Chilean group wowed the audience with their musicianship. They shared guitars, drums, panpipes, charangos, and bottles of water on stage, maintaining the same quality of feeling and sound on every song.

The group kicked off its world tour in Lafayette College and launched its CD/DVD set, "The Time Machine." Much like the album, the concert was an expedition into the cultural and political circumstances that inspired their music over the years. The show, which was originally planned to include an intermission, was done in one long set to allow time for the audience to catch the presidential debate.

Their sound was robust, as seven of the eight musicians sang simultaneously in many of the songs. The instrumentation was equally versatile, blending panpipes with soprano saxophones and deep drums with rippling strings. They remained true to the traditions of the Andes and to the political struggles that defined the group before and after the 1973 coup d'etat in Chile that brought dictator Augusto Pinochet into power.

The band paid tribute to songwriters Victor Jara and Violeta Parra and celebrated Andean rhythms and melodies. They also paid homage to Italy, where they spent 15 years in exile. Some of their most exciting songs demonstrated the variety of African influences in the music of various parts of Latin America.

Founder Jorge Coulon addressed the audience many times to explain the tunes, tell jokes and stories, and even to comment about the presidential debate. He said he wondered why people must be asked sacrifice for the health of the economy.

The group did not provide an answer to that dilemma, but they explained many other aspects of Latin American life through their voices and melodies.

JOHN J. MOSER has been around long enough to have seen the original Ramones in a small club in New Jersey, U2 from the fourth row of a theater and Bob Dylan's born-again tours. But he also has the number for All-American Rejects' Nick Wheeler on his cell phone, wrote the first story ever done on Jack's Mannequin and hung out in Wiz Khalifa's hotel room.

OTHER CONTRIBUTORS

JODI DUCKETT: As The Morning Call's assistant features editor responsible for entertainment, she spends a lot of time surveying the music landscape and sizing up the Valley's festivals and club scene. She's no expert, but enjoys it all — especially artists who resonated in her younger years, such as Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Tracy Chapman, Santana and Joni Mitchell.

KATHY LAUER-WILLIAMS enjoys all types of music, from roots rock and folk to classical and opera. Music has been a constant backdrop to her life since she first sat on the steps listening to her mother’s Broadway LPs when she was 2. Since becoming a mother herself, she has become well-versed on the growing genre of kindie rock and, with her son in tow, can boast she has seen a majority of the current kid’s performers from Dan Zanes to They Might Be Giants.

STEPHANIE SIGAFOOS: A Jersey native raised in Northeast PA, she was reared in a house littered with 8-tracks, 45s and cassette tapes of The Beatles, Elvis, Meatloaf and Billy Joel. She also grew up on the sounds of Reba McEntire, Garth Brooks and Tim McGraw and can be found traversing the countryside in search of the sounds of a steel guitar. A fan of today's 'new country,' she digs mainstream/country-pop crossovers like Lady Antebellum and Sugarland and other artists that illustrate the genre's diversity.